Sharpton Runs for Presidency, and Influence

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: December 5, 2003

Correction Appended

In the world of politics, the Rev. Al Sharpton sees himself as a sort of D.J., working alone behind a console, grabbing old hits and spinning them into a contemporary beat.

But while performers are busy mixing James Brown into their music, Mr. Sharpton is sampling a bit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a touch of the hip-hop impresario Sean Combs, who also goes by the name P. Diddy.

''The question,'' Mr. Sharpton asks, ''is can I bring it to the pop charts?''

This is more than another of Mr. Sharpton's trademark one-liners. In a sense it reveals that he may appreciate just how long a shot he is for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

But then Al Sharpton, 49, is accustomed to defying expectations. Respecting the challenge of a presidential campaign is one thing; doubting himself is another. His friends say it is hard to overestimate his faith in his own ability.

''He has the kind of confidence Christ had on the cross,'' said Michael A. Hardy, a lawyer and longtime friend who has worked with Mr. Sharpton in New York, adding, ''He has confidence in why he lives.''

Why he lives may in turn connect with what he really seeks from this campaign: a springboard for overcoming his controversial past and achieving pre-eminence among African-American leaders. Another old friend, Dwight McKee of Chicago, sees noble and not-so-noble motives propelling Mr. Sharpton in this quest.

''On the one hand, he has an intolerance of injustice,'' said Mr. McKee, a civil rights organizer. ''On the other, he is after a sense of recognition, a need for recognition.''

If recognition is indeed what Mr. Sharpton craves, then stepping into the media klieg lights of a national race has provided him with an easy means of attaining it. In fact, his profile has risen so high lately that he was chosen as this week's host of ''Saturday Night Live'' -- a vehicle that, while not a proven vote getter, certainly brings him nationwide attention. He spent this week rehearsing for the show -- a strong hint that this kind of limelight is more important to him than a hard week on the campaign trail.

His campaign has little in the way of organization or infrastructure, relying largely on the generosity of a few wealthy donors. Nor has Mr. Sharpton ever won any of his races for public office. Yet the Democratic Party treats his candidacy just as it does those of war heroes (John Kerry), retired generals (Wesley K. Clark) and former governors (Howard Dean).

Accepting such parity as his due, Mr. Sharpton contends that mere election to office does not necessarily bestow the kind of political experience he has to offer. He says he would like to win the nomination; he expects at the very least to gain influence within the party.

A former aide summarized things this way: ''I think Al is positioning himself to be leader of black America.''

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been the pre-eminent black political figure for nearly two decades, may in the end have something to say about that. (In fact he may have a lot to say, as Mr. Sharpton is scheduled to portray Mr. Jackson this weekend in an ''SNL'' skit.) But so far, both men are insisting that despite their personal differences, there is plenty of room for many black leaders in America -- although Mr. Jackson has pointedly refrained from endorsing any one candidate, and his son Representative Jesse Jr., Democrat of Illinois, is backing Mr. Dean.

In his mission to be the black leader who gets heard first, Mr. Sharpton is trying to cast his candidacy broadly, as a tent for the politically alienated.

As Mr. Sharpton put it after a campaign appearance in Washington, ''I am the one that was willing to step forward, and I am the one that can create mass energy around.''

Lorne Michaels, creator of ''Saturday Night Live,'' seems to echo this opinion in explaining why he invited Mr. Sharpton onto the show. ''People are responding to him,'' Mr. Michaels said, adding, ''Whether his candidacy is serious or not, he is being talked about.''

Among African-Americans, Mr. Sharpton, who is married and has two daughters, courts the hip-hop generation -- a challenge considering hip-hop has not yet emerged as a unified political force -- and he courts that generation's parents, and its grandparents, the people with some memory of the civil rights struggle. He wants to be their leader beyond this race, as well.

It is a stretch, for a man who is too young to have worked beside Dr. King, yet too old to be part of the younger generation. (Mr. Sharpton is the youngest of the nine candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination.) It is a gamble because many blacks contend there is no longer a need for a black person to play that role in America. They see Mr. Sharpton as a throwback to a time when black leaders originated only in the church because other social and political roles were denied them.

Everything with Al Sharpton begins with the black church. The story -- widely known but not independently verifiable -- is that he started to preach when he was 4, mimicking pastors he saw in his own church in Brooklyn, and that he was ordained a Pentecostal minister by the time he was 10. It is on the church pulpit where he delivers a message meant to try to convince older black voters that they need him to reinvigorate the civil rights movement and to convince younger voters that they owe it to the civil rights generation to back his campaign.

Correction: December 9, 2003, Tuesday A chart on Friday with an article about the Rev. Al Sharpton's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination referred incorrectly to votes he won in United States Senate races in 1992 and 1994 and the New York City mayoral race in 1997. The votes -- 15 percent in 1992, 26 percent in 1994 and 32 percent in 1997 -- were in the primaries, not the general elections. Correction: December 22, 2003, Monday A profile of the Rev. Al Sharpton on Dec. 5 misstated the year of the disturbance in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, during which he was stabbed. It was 1991, not 1989.